NYT: Antiwar Group Says Its Ad Is Rejected (by Clear Channel)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/nyregion/12billboard.html?pagewanted=print&position

A group of antiwar advocates is accusing Clear Channel Communications, one of the nation's largest media companies, with close ties to national Republicans, of preventing the group from displaying a Times Square billboard critical of the war in Iraq.

The billboard - an image of a red, white and blue bomb with the words "Democracy Is Best Taught by Example, Not by War" - was supposed to go up next month, the antiwar group said, and it was to be in place when Republicans from across the country gathered in New York City to nominate President Bush for a second term.

But members of the group, Project Billboard, contend that Clear Channel backed out of a leasing agreement last month that the two had reached in December for the billboard site, on the Marriott Marquis Hotel at Broadway and 45th Street.

A Project Billboard spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said the group planned to file a lawsuit today in federal court in Manhattan charging Clear Channel with breach of contract and asking it to live up to what the group said were the terms of the deal.

Last night, the president and chief executive of Clear Channel, Paul Meyer, said the company had objected to the group's use of "the bomb imagery" in the proposed billboard. Mr. Meyer said Clear Channel had accepted a billboard that would replace the bomb with a dove. However, he said, any billboard at the site required the approval of the Marriott Marquis management, which he said also objected to the bomb.

[JaySherman]

1. Wouldn't object the bomb if it was a recruiting billboard, would they?

Of course not.

[Pachamama]

2. I wish I owned a building down in that area - I'd let that group or other

....paint the entire building in an anti-war, anti-GOP theme....and there wouldn't be a damn thing any Repuke or Clear Channel pig could do...but...then again, Bloomberg would probably site some statute not allowing it... :grr:

[maggrwaggr]

3. it's time for us all to buy paintball guns

and run around the cities, at night, and blast the shit out of Clear Channel billboards with the paintball guns.

I am not joking.

They are fucking us, so let's fuck them right back.

[hightime]

4. Are you also going to vandalize a Marriott hotel?

[sandnsea]

5. Oh why not?

We are such fucking cowards in this country. What's a misdemeanor vandalism on your record anyway? Running for office sometime soon?

[schultzee]

7. I would like a bumpert sticker, "Clear Channel Clearly garbage"

[saracat]

6. I don't think the bomb was appropriate

in this terror oriented climate.I believe they knew better and are just stirring the pot for a little publicity.Otherwise leave the statement and change the picture!

[schultzee]

8. Perhaps not, but isn't that what we are doing to Iraq? We are supposedly

creating democracy by invasion with bombs, guns ect. And that dictator we put in place is already doing some of the same things Saddam did. We will be there a long time stealing the oil.

[ixion]

9. the only reason there exists a 'terror-oriented climate' is because

the rethugs made it so. Terror is their platform. And when you buy into the notion that terror is all around us, waiting to strike at any moment we are off guard, then you buy into the BIG LIE.

Sure, there are people out there who would do bad things.

But living in a Police State is not the solution.

Why is the icon of a bomb not okay for a peace billboard, but bombs falling on Baghdad is perfectly acceptable?

Why is it that when the anti-war groups try to dissent they are censored beyond reproach, yet 'patriotic' groups (including the pResident's reelection campaign, can USE THOSE SAME IMAGES, with little to no questions asked from those who provide the media?


Why is it that death and destruction are acceptable, but Peace is a dirty word?


Why is it acceptable for this country to kill thousands of innocent civillians in the name of liberation, but when another group kills our innocent civillians, they are terrorists? I don't see the difference.

At any rate, the truth remains: There can be no war against abstractions if we want to maintain our collective sanity.

Wars against abstractions are unwinnable. Just look at the first test of this concept: the 'War on Drugs', started in 1985 by another neocon, Ron 'Ray-gun'. That 'war'(sic) still goes on today, ruining the lives of 100K+ Americans every year, and nothing has changed, except that we now have the highest per capita prison population of any 'free' country. :eyes:

The same will be true if we allow the 'War on Terror' to continue. The year will be 2525, and we will still be fighting that 'war'(sic), and any other war on abstractions that some arrogant, facist neocon thinks will help destroy the Bill or Rights and the Constitution.

I have seen the enemy of the Great American Way, and its name is neocon.